What areas of innovation are banks really focusing on right now?

For Wells Fargo, the ways in which banks deliver information — as well as the technologies used to deliver it — is a key area of focus, at least for those employees working at the bank’s Digital Labs facility.

“At the moment, we’re really focused on ‘timely advice,’ Shari Van Cleave, head of digital labs for Wells Fargo, told Bank Innovation — a concept that the bank uses to describe all the ways in which it can more quickly reach customers with the information they need in the moment.

Founded years ago as an online project, Wells Fargo Digital Labs now has a physical campus located, like many tech centers, in San Francisco. Developers, engineers, and data scientists in the center are working on IoT projects and new updates to the Wells mobile app, and experimenting with the different ways that “timely advice” can be used to create financial literacy, Van Cleave said.

“It’s being able to alert them in the moment, to know what they want to hear about, what they want to see,” she said. “It’s in-the-moment predictive banking — we want to make sure they receive the advice they need in advance [of their financial need].”

The bank is also “exploring” and experimenting with voice banking, Van Cleave said. As voice becomes more popular, there will be people who only want to communicate with the bank via voice — so figuring out that assistance within its mobile app, as well as other digital services, is a focus for Digital Labs, she added.

“It could reimagine the way we bank in the future, using your voice to authenticate or pay,” Van Cleave told Bank Innovation. “It’s a valuable [tool] that goes right back to timely advice [for Wells Fargo].”

Already, Wells Fargo uses voice verification as an authentication method at its call centers.